Santiago Talavera studied Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid, including a one-year scholarship at the Camberwell College of Arts in London. His work has been awarded best exhibition at the recent Abierto Valencia 2021, first prize at the XII Mostra Internacional de arte Gas Natural Fenosa or the XVII Premio UNED de Bellas Artes, among others.
He has had solo exhibitions in museums such as CEART - Centro de Arte Tomás y Valiente and in galleries in Madrid, Valencia and Gijón. His work has been exhibited individually and collectively in various institutions, including La Casa Encendida, Centro Centro and Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, Instituto Cervantes in Chicago, Berlin Freires Museum, as well as various contemporary art fairs in Spain, Argentina, United States, England and South Africa.
The central axis of Santiago Talavera's work is the reflection on the human condition through the investigation of the landscape and its symbolic, narrative and spatial possibilities.
He began to explore natural catastrophe as a metaphor through the installation and series Llegar a ser Oceáno in 2006, which featured abandoned houses and tsunamis. Color plays an important role and pink, from flamingo to bubblegum pastel, has become a hallmark of his work. The absence of the human being in his works, combined with an intimate and absurd atmosphere in which the past and the future seem to intermingle, accentuate the need to think about the place we occupy, rather than as mere observers.
